Solar System
sciencepunk | August 15, 2010Michael Hearst of One Ring Zero writes:
I just did a Google search for "science blogs," and landed on your site. And the first thing I see is a picture of The Magnetic Fields, who are good friends of mine, and who I've toured with. Very strange. The reason I was searching for science blogs is because my band, One Ring Zero, is gearing up to release a new album on Sept. 7th ... our first studio album in 3 years. The theme and title for this one is PLANETS. The album is a sort of revisit to our solar system, as the 100th anniversary of Holst's The Planets approaches. Here's some more info…
esiegel | August 11, 2010"Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Once a year, in mid-August, the Perseid Meteor Shower comes to town. If you're going to see just one meteor shower a year, make it this one.
Image credit: Tom King.
Some years, there's a bright Moon in the night sky to contend with, like there was last year. But this year, we're all in luck. The Moon is as close to new as we could hope for; just a tiny sliver of a crescent, which will set before the night sky even achieves total darkness.
Image…
esiegel | August 6, 2010"Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world; knowing they're going to light the bottom--and doesn't get a little worried--does not fully understand the situation."
-John Young, after being asked if he was worried about making the first Space Shuttle flight (STS-1).
It may be hard to believe, but the United States has been flying Space Shuttles since 1981: for 29 years. But what does it take to get a shuttle ready for launch?
In real life, the Space Shuttles come down from a mission and get towed around the campus at Kennedy Space Center. Where do you…
esiegel | August 4, 2010Skinner: Well, that was wonderful. A good time was had by all. I'm pooped.
Chalmers: Yes, I should be goooo-(notices kitchen on fire)-od lord, what is happening in there?
Skinner: Aurora Borealis?
Chalmers: Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
Skinner: Yes.
Chalmers: May I see it?
Skinner: No.
Agnes: Seymour, the house is on fire!
Skinner: No, Mother, it's just the Northern Lights.
-The Simpsons, episode 22 Short Films about Springfield
Something rare and exciting happened just three days ago in our…
esiegel | July 28, 2010"Don't blame yourself. The apocalypse wasn't your fault. Actually, it was just as much your fault as it was anyone else's. Come to think of it, if you're an American, it was probably about 80-90 percent more your fault than the average human. But don't let that get you down. It wasn't exclusively your fault. Unless you're the president. Then it might be your fault. But you'll have plenty of interns to tell you that it wasn't, so you'll be fine." -Meghann Marco
Nothing gets a scientist in the press quite like telling everyone that we're all gonna die. Remember when there was talk of creating…
esiegel | July 12, 2010Yo ho! It's hot, the sun is not a place where we could live.
But here on earth there'd be no life without the light it gives.
We need its light. We need its heat. We need its energy.
Without the sun without a doubt there'd be no you and me. -They Might Be Giants
Ahh, the Sun. Beautiful and blinding to the naked eye, it's still the source of energy that gave rise to all of the life on Earth that we know.
Image credit: GOES satellite, in the X-ray.
The Sun emits energy all over the light spectrum, from long-wavelength radio waves (many meters long) to visible light to X-rays (just a small…
esiegel | July 7, 2010"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful." -Mark Victor Hansen
Last week, the Obama Administration unveiled their new National Space Policy for the United States of America. This is the first national space policy since Bush's policy from 2006.
Do you remember what the main stated goal of the Bush administration was? To "…
esiegel | June 18, 2010"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." -Helen Keller
If you've been paying attention, you heard that the Kepler mission, earlier this week, announced the discovery of 706 candidate planets orbiting stars in its field of view.
And while most of the planets it found were Neptune-sized or smaller, they were still mostly gas giants, and still mostly closer than Mercury to their parent stars. Kepler's looking at 100,000 stars, and while finding 706 planets is certainly not bad for just over a month's…
esiegel | June 17, 2010"We are all captives of the pictures in our head -- our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists." -Walter Lippmann
For a long time, humans have wondered about life on other worlds, and about worlds around other stars. Until the 1990s, this was mostly speculation and hope. But shortly thereafter, some clues started rolling in. In 1992, the first planet outside of our Solar System was detected, and three years later, the first planet around a solar-like star was found.
Only, something was awfully weird about this planet. You see, in our Solar System, Mercury…
esiegel | June 10, 2010"A good heart is the Sun and the Moon; or, rather, the Sun and not the Moon, for it shines bright and never changes." -William Shakespeare
Did I ever tell you how lucky you are?
Lucky, indeed, to have the Sun for a star?
Our Sun -- the ultimate source of all the light, heat, energy, and life on our world -- is remarkable in how constant it is. In fact, we didn't even know just how constant it was until we launched the SOHO satellite, shown below.
SOHO has just released their results from more than 12 years of observing the Sun from space, and found that the size of the Sun has been constant…
esiegel | June 7, 2010"We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way." -Buzz Aldrin
Sometimes, you go away for one weekend and you miss out on some awfully big news. So while I was competing in the USA Beard & Mustache championships (and I -- along with everyone else -- was put to shame by Willi Chevalier), some amazing news came back from our closest astronomical neighbor.
Back when the space race was in…
esiegel | May 28, 2010"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this." -Henry David Thoreau
Maybe for you, Henry. But a century and a half later, we are explorers of many other lands, including this one.
Back in 2004, two rovers landed on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity. And while Spirit has gotten all the press with its trials and tribulations, Opportunity has quietly been, well, exceeding all reasonable expectations.
Opportunity landed in…
esiegel | May 22, 2010"The moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun." -William Shakespeare
Let's assume you lived before we walked on the Moon. Before we had ever been to space, hell, even before the invention of the telescope. Why not go all the way back to before we knew the planets went around the Sun! You know, back when all you had to go on for knowledge of the sky was your eye.
Some nights, you look up at the sky, and what would you see? Instead of thousands and thousands of stars, something might be filling your sky with light pollution. Indeed, the closest astronomical body to…
esiegel | May 5, 2010It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out. -J.R.R. Tolkien
The night sky is no stranger to most of you. Once the Sun goes down in the west, the sky darkens, turning ever-deeper shades of blue until it approaches blackness, and stars and planets begin to come out against the fading backdrop.
Many things pollute the darkening sky, and can obscure your vision of the dimmest objects in the sky. Getting away from the city and light pollution is important, as is having clear skies without too many clouds in them.…
esiegel | April 22, 2010Note: This article first appeared here on Scienceblogs one year ago today.
There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day, from sustainability efforts to simply appreciating nature.
And while this is a beautiful shot of Forest Park right here in Portland, it doesn't compare -- in my eyes -- to the perfection of Earth as seen from so far away.
In October of 1946, a V-2 missile was launched from New Mexico, straight up into the air. And at its maximum height of 65 miles (just barely into what was then considered outer space), it snapped the first photographs of the Earth from Space. (And you can…
esiegel | April 16, 2010I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.-John F. Kennedy, 1961
The entire human endeavor of spaceflight is -- without a doubt -- one of the greatest achievements in the history of humanity. Looking up into the heavens certainly provides some spectacular sights and a huge amount of insight into how space, stars, and galaxies work, among a myriad of other things. (And click the image below for an amazing high-resolution version.)
But my two biggest complaints about the space…
cevans | March 29, 2010
My Very Excellent Mother Just Served us Nine Pizzas.
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets.
My Very Early Morning Jam Sandwiches Usually Nauseate People.
Mon Vieux Tu M'as Jeté Sur Une Nouvelle Planète!
-- Various mnemonic devices for remembering the order of the nine planets
I just found out that Mercury is shrinking.
The planet, already our most diminutive neighbor, has lost around 3 miles of its 3,000 mile diameter in its life, or one tenth of one percent.This may not sound like much, but in geological terms, three miles is immensely significant.
This boggling fact was…
esiegel | March 19, 2010It's a question of whether we're going to go forward into the future, or past to the back. -Dan Quayle
This is my last day writing before my spring break begins, and I'm hoping for some great weather as I prepare to head to the Oregon coast. Warm weather, clear skies... I can picture it now. In my dreams, it looks something like this.
It makes me think about global warming, the greenhouse effect, and whether this is really cause for concern or not.
On one hand, it's definitely true that heating the planet up by even a few degrees will have catastrophic effects on our sea levels as the ice…
esiegel | March 3, 2010What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. -W. Shakespeare
After writing about the 80th Birthday of Pluto becoming a planet, I was asked about Pluto's planetary status, and whether I thought it deserves to be a planet or not. Let me just recap for you, very briefly, what this argument is all about.
Pluto, when it was discovered back in 1930, was the only object in the Solar System found out beyond Neptune. Although we imaged it, observed it, and surveyed the whole sky for other objects, it remained the only Solar System object out beyond Neptune until…
esiegel | February 26, 2010The Truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction. -Gandhi
Last time, I spoke to you about how tides work on Earth.
In a nutshell, a nearby massive body (like the Moon or the Sun) pulls on the Earth's center due to its gravity. But the portion of the Earth that's closest to that massive body gets pulled with a slightly greater force, while the portion that's farthest gets pulled with a slightly smaller force. This differential force, known as a tidal force, causes objects to be stretched out, and causes our oceans to bulge at the points nearest and farthest from the Moon,…